On several occasions, particularly on the periphery of the Habsburg Empire during the 17th and 18th centuries, dead people were suspected of being revenants or vampires, and consequently dug up and destroyed. Some contemporary authors named this phenomenon Magia Posthuma. This blog is dedicated to understanding what happened and why.

Tuesday, 31 July 2007

Das grosse Handbuch der Dämonen

During a visit in Hamburg I tried to look for books of value for my interest in the Magia Posthuma. In fact, I only found two books, and I wasn't quite sure about one of them, Das grosse Handbuch der Dämonen compiled by Helmut Werner (tosa/Verlag Ueberreuter, Vienna). A few vampires encyclopedias have been published, but I must confess that I rarely use them, because they mainly focus on the fictional vampire. So I feared the worst when I unwrapped this hardcover book, but was delighted to find entries on early authors on vampires and vampire related topics like Phillip Rohr, Michael Ranft and Johann Christoph Harenberg.

So, obviously, it is debatable whether this is really an encyclopedia of demons or not, and it is probably a matter of taste whether you like the mix of themes. Personally, I would have preferred it done differently, e.g. making it easier to find the sources behind each entry, but I still find the encyclopedia both useful and enjoyable. Certainly, this book made the trip from Germany to Denmark by train feel shorter.

Unfortunately, errors can be found, and I can't help wondering why there is no entry about Peter Plogojowitz, when there is one about Arnont Paole?! I certainly don't understand how Werner has come to rename Karl Ferdinand von Schertz"Karl-Friedrich Schertz"?!

So some caution is required when using Hemut Werner's Handbuch, but I am sure that this book will be enjoyed by others interested in Magia Posthuma, and it will probably also attract some new attention to the old vampire cases and the 18th century vampire debate. The bibliography is also worth studying, so at the price of €9.95, there is no need to hesitate in ordering this 316 page Handbuch.

1 comment:

Unfortunately, further use of the book has made me aware of more errors which makes the Handbuch pretty unreliable, i.e. you had better check with some other books before relying on the information in the book. Hopefully someone will do a better job in the future!

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Magia Posthuma is the title of a book written by the Catholic lawyer Karl Ferdinand von Schertz in 1704. In the book von Schertz examines the case of a spectre that roamed about and harmed the living. Several of these cases were known in Moravia where von Schertz published his book, as well as in neighbouring areas. Only two decades later, a similar case was investigated by Austrian officials in North Eastern Serbia. The local people called the spectre a vampire. This incident inspired the deacon Michael Ranft to publish a study on the mastication of the dead. Just a few years later, in 1732, another case of vampirism was investigated in Serbia. Reports of this investigation were published throughout Europe with the consequence that the interest in vampires exploded. Vampires became the topic of numerous learned articles and books. Cases of magia posthuma or vampirism, however, kept occurring. In 1755 empress Maria Theresa aided by her court physician Gerard van Swieten began passing laws against the exhumation and destruction of corpses as well as other acts of superstition. Within decades, however, vampires caught the imagination of poets and authors of gothic fiction. Subsequently popularized by Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel Dracula and numerous movies, vampires have become part of everyday modern mythology, but the historical and cultural background has not yet been fully explored and understood. In fact, the modern conception of the vampiric count bears little or no resemblance to the revenants of the 18th century, and several modern books rather obscure than enlighten us on the early modern European revenants and vampires. This blog is an informal and personal contribution to the enterprise of exploring and understanding what happened and why.